White House staff around Trump STILL don’t get Islamic threat

Well, it appears that another campaign promise bit the dust. The Jerusalem embassy move went the way of repealing Obamacare, rescinding Obama’s amnesty, building the wall, undoing the Paris climate accord and Iran nuclear deal, and protecting religious liberty. All for the purpose of preserving the PLO peace process — because nothing says “drain the swamp,” understanding Islam, and “America-first” like the Oslo peace process.

The collapse of this White House administration’s foreign policy under the leadership of National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster stems from one source: the refusal to recognize the insufferable nature of unreformed Islam.

Throughout the presidential election, both President Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, consistently hit Obama and Hillary for refusing to even name the enemy and recognize its threat doctrine. After all, if you refuse to identify who the enemy is, how can you place our soldiers in harm’s way, craft diplomatic relationships, and strategize any outcome in the Middle East?

Donald Trump clearly recognized this point in a seminal foreign policy speech he delivered on Sept. 7, 2016, when he declared, “We now have an administration, and a former secretary of state, who refuse to say ‘Radical Islamic Terrorism.’”

Promising a realist approach recognizing the Middle East and Islam as it exists — and not as we want it to exist — Trump delivered somewhat of a doctrine that night in Philadelphia, which clearly resonated with many of the voters that propelled him to the Oval Office: “In a Trump administration, our actions in the Middle East will be tempered by realism. The current strategy of toppling regimes, with no plan for what to do the day after, only produces power vacuums that are filled by terrorists.”

Trump further promised that a new moral clarity will help us “make new friends, rebuild old alliances, and bring new allies into the fold.”

The recognition that radical Islamists are the source of the problem is what dictates immigration policy, decisions over military action, the so-called “Israeli-Palestinian” conflicts, and our views toward Iran, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and the Muslim Brotherhood. The expectation of many supporters of this president were that he’d move us in the opposite direction of the Obama administration on all aforementioned fronts.

In comes H.R. McMaster, who refuses to even recognize the enemy by adamantly declining to even talk about radical Islamic terrorism, which in itself, “terrorism” is somewhat of a euphemism for the problems endemic in sharia-adherence. Everything else has gone downhill from there, and it was on full display Tuesday.

The consequences of willful blindness on the Islamic threat is the source of McMaster’s desire to get us further entrenched in Syria and Afghanistan, bring in more refugees, kowtow to the Muslim Brotherhood, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Turkey, and throw Israel under the bus. After all, if we are walking on eggshells in the Arab world with our troops strung out precariously throughout the various theaters refereeing Islamic civil wars, we wouldn’t want our support for Israel to harm them.

Consider the following observations:

Throwing Israel under the bus: Both McMaster and White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer refused to affirm that even the Western Wall is part of Israel. This echoes Obama’s policies and comes on the heels of the White House refusing to allow Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu to appear with the president at the Western Wall. It further accentuates the growing push within the administration to embrace the PLO. It doesn’t help that the intel Trump leaked to Russian officials was reportedly from Israeli intelligence services.

Embracing Erdogan: In another throwback to Obama’s policies – embracing enemies and alienating allies – Trump hosted Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. This man is an Islamo-fascist and the Sunni equivalent of the Iranian Mullahs. He stands at the nexus of Sunni Islamic supremacism and is an enemy of the American people. Yet, he has been allowed to fund the construction of the largest Islamic Center in the country just outside Washington, D.C. Rep. David Brat, R-Va., has a bill (H.R. 5824) that would prohibit a foreign national of a country that limits the free exercise of religion in that country from making any expenditure in the U.S. promoting a religion. Yet, I doubt Trump’s meeting was about that. Instead, he praised this brutal Islamist:

Further involvement in Afghanistan: There is growing momentum within the administration for McMaster’s plan to further entrench us in the Afghanistan quagmire by sending more troops. The 15 years of utter failure in Afghanistan is not President Trump’s fault. But if he doubles down on the failed strategy without either forging a new path or getting out, he will own it just as much. McMaster is continuing the strategy of “placing our brave soldiers into an Islamic civil war first, ask questions about national security interests and strategy later.”The question is how can we get our soldiers further involved when we don’t even understand the threat doctrine of the enemy?We have nothing to show for our efforts but over 1,800 military deaths, 20,000 wounded, and the Taliban controlling more territory than ever before – all to establish a sharia-compliant government with a constitution (set up by U.S. officials) which fosters the type of Islamic supremacism we are at war with. If this White House administration is going to saddle up to Erdogan and the PLO, why exactly would we send our troops into another Islamic theater to fight for … what?

According to the recent “Worldwide Threat Assessment” presented to the Senate by Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, the “situation in Afghanistan will very likely continue to deteriorate, even if international support is sustained.” The report further notes that “Kabul’spolitical dysfunction and ineffectiveness will almost certainly be the greatest vulnerability to stability in 2017.” Thus, even if we temporarily beat back the Taliban, for whom will we hold the ground without the need for a substantial troops presence forever?

This Trump administration’s Middle East policy will never succeed until it speaks with one clear voice and identifies the nature of our enemy. That will not happen until H.R. McMaster, Dina Powell, Jared and Ivanka Trump are kept out of the decision-making process.

Author: Daniel Horowitz

Daniel Horowitz is a senior editor of Conservative Review. Follow him on Twitter @RMConservative.